


War Paint

by deathwailart



Series: Dragon Knights [OLD] [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Body Paint, High Fantasy, Knights - Freeform, M/M, Traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 11:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hákon and Brynjar travel with the nomads and learn one of the old customs of the humans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	War Paint

It is a tradition of the nomads to paint their faces so that they can identify one another readily and convey different messages or a state of mind. It was a tradition from back when they had kingdoms and later when they used it as a sign of rebellion against elves and dwarves. It fell out of practice but for nomads and once Hákon and Brynjar rejoin them as Dragon Knights they keep making remarks about barefaced little boys. Hákon scoffs because he says he is not a barbarian and that he'll grow a beard to cover his face instead. (Brynjar dismisses that – stubble is allowed, he likes the idea but not a full beard.) Hákon pokes the paint when it's offered then complains about the smell and texture. The older men just laugh and shake their heads at him and get on with things.  
  
The first time Brynjar shows his face at the campfire with clumsy stripes across his cheeks Hákon turns a peculiar shade of red, almost falling off the log they're sharing. He gets a swift boot in the back from the nomad leader and the cold shoulder for the better part of a week. Brynjar keeps painting his face and enjoys spending time with the nomads as well as getting to tease Hákon mercilessly until the other young man is pouting before he starts getting surly. Enough so that when Brynjar comes to him one morning after Hákon has had maybe an hour of sleep since his watch ended, he just wants to be left alone.  
  
"Will you help me paint my face?" Brynjar asks and he sounds nervous although Hákon has no idea why, the jar held out to him, glinting in the early morning light as they both blink sleep out of their eyes.  
  
"What?" Hákon asks, rubbing his eyes then looking at Brynjar's face with the earnest smile in place.  
  
"Will you help me paint my face? I'll help with yours," he offers as though that will make all the difference.  
  
"I don't want to put on the war paint Brynjar and you definitely don't want me to put it on you," he grumbles as he starts to get dressed.  
  
"Oh."  
  
"What?" Hákon asks again because suddenly Brynjar's shoulders have dropped as though he might curl in on himself and appear smaller to the world and he has no idea why.  "Bryn?"  
  
"It's nothing," Brynjar replies sharply, turning away to apply the war paint himself.  
  
"Bryn, I'm sorry, this is import--"  
  
It's as far as he gets before someone is giving him a shove to go get fresh water from the river. By the time he gets back Brynjar's face is painted, moss green lines radiating out diagonally from below his eyes, a long stripe painted through his lips to his chin. He gives Hákon the cold shoulder but they don't get to talk; there's work to be done, keeping track of elves and dwarves through the harsh lands of Stjarnacado. They're the two who do the heavy lifting, the dogsbodies. Chop wood, fetch water, get the fire going, take whatever watch shifts no one else wants.  
  
Inexperience dictates that Hákon and Brynjar don't share a watch so Hákon drags himself out of his bedroll just as Brynjar shakes him awake and nothing more. There isn't the briefest brush of lips shared between them as is usually there custom, no Brynjar smiling sleepily as Hákon grumbles and staggers to the fire joining Ralof, the nomad leader. Hákon tries to tell himself that it doesn't bother him but it does and he throws himself down by the fire and pulls out a dagger to sharpen so he won't be sat there worrying about what he's done wrong and how he fixes it. Life was so much easier in the south. Despite his fierce appearance – tall and broad with wild grey hair and a long scar running down one cheek – Ralof's a good man, easy to talk to and above all he's patient with two young men still learning the ropes. He was born in the north, like both Hákon and Brynjar and raised there too until he left with his friends to seek another life. Like both Hákon and Brynjar he is troubled when it comes to Jormsen and the way the elders rule it but it is not their place to say anything of it. Hákon and Brynjar might have northern blood and names but they were raised in the south, warmer and nowhere near as harsh, raised where elves do not hate them so much and where some even help the humans try to carve out a better life.  
  
"You know lad," Ralof begins that night by the fire as he warms his chapped, weather-beaten hands, "there's a lot you don't know about your own ways. I know we've told you more than you'd have learned down in Moja but there's a lot you still have to learn. It's why your teacher wanted you to come with us instead of floating around to be a pair of dragon knights on your own." Hákon doesn't attempt conversation, he's too tired to want to bother and he doesn't trust what'll come out of his mouth anyway. "Have you bothered to learn the history of the war paint?"  
  
"It's a way of identifying ourselves," Hákon answers because he's been raised better than to ever ignore a question from an elder unless it's rhetorical. "Part of our customs from before the purge."  
  
"It's a sign of defiance now. It's part of us reclaiming our heritage from what was lost to the elves and dwarves." Ralof claps a hand on Hákon's shoulders, squeezes it tight enough to hurt. "It's something we nomads wear with pride."  
  
The words hang in the air as Hákon drops his head with embarrassment and shame. He should know better than this. He _knows_ better than this but all of this is so new that he wants to be able to still get away with stupid things even though he's a Dragon Knight and a father now. "I know," he finally says quietly, his voice full of reproach, "I'm sorry for being so petulant about it."  
  
"It's not for everyone lad and no harm done for us - we've got tougher hides than boars. But you young folk are our future." The words were no doubt drummed into Ralof as they were Hákon when he was a small boy, the future, the future, always the future so they can reclaim the past, trapped in a strange sort of loop; how do you look forward when you're always looking back? Right now the words still make him sick because he remembers little Tanis and Torrin, his and Brynjar's children, a daughter and son respectively that they'll never get to know. They weren't allowed to take them south and that doesn't sit right with him, to just abandon them there. Do your duty, they said, your duty here is done, now go elsewhere. "You listening to me?"  
  
"Sorry," Hákon murmurs, shaking himself back to the present. "Just...thinking about Jormsen."  
  
"Aye, aye. It's not a place you forget in a hurry." Hákon nods in agreement but he feels lighter out from under the shadow of the fangs set high in the mountains. "I know you and Brynjar are fated ones, d'you know how good it is for everyone here to know that that kind of magic is still alive?"  
  
"Brynjar's not speaking to me, I don't think we're good at it."  
  
"You think everything is like the ballad of Áki and Stígandr? D'you think all of that's even true? Those two were nomads through and through same as they were Dragon Knights and they would have snapped and argued with one another constantly. Stick a dragon heart in someone's chest and you change them and you're _young_."  
"It's the face paint! We were fine until the face paint."  
  
It goes quiet. The wind in the trees, the snores and quiet breathing of the people around them, the rustle of bed rolls.  
  
"Ah." It's mind-boggling how amused Ralof can sound just by speaking one little syllable. Hákon looks at him suspiciously.  
  
"What?"  
  
"For lovers," Hákon will one day not blush at that term but somehow he still does, right to his ears, "sharing war paint is a different thing. It's the most intimate thing you can do, to paint the face of another."  
  
" _Really_?"  
  
"Those were our ways of old and you don't get to say what another person will put on your face. You're letting that person put on the face the outside world will see and there are messages they can put on your skin that others will know and understand."  
  
"Shit! Why didn't he tell me?"  
  
"Maybe he thought you knew or maybe he thought you'd trust him enough..." Ralof trails off right as Hákon lets out a loud groan, rolling over and onto his side, the dagger dropped to the ground in front of him as he kicks himself.  
  
"Solace save me I'm such an arse."  
  
"You'll find no argument from me on that account," Ralof replies in an amused voice.  
  
"D'you think he'll forgive me?"  
  
"That boy loves you and you love him, you'll both try to forgive each other at once and run off into the woods where you think no one can hear you and give all those nymphs a bloody good show Look," Ralof hauls him upright and this time the hand on his shoulder is gentle, perhaps what a father's hand might feel like if Hákon had ever known his, "this is when you can learn who you both are. The dragons blessed you both with more than you know yet."  
  
They stay quiet for the rest of the watch and Hákon's movements with the whetstone are slow, methodical, contemplative. When he beds down for the night he does so with a tentative arm slung around Brynjar's hips - Brynjar doesn't move away and come morning they're all tangled up in one another.  
  
"Will you," Hákon says with breathless anticipation, stealing Brynjar's war paint from his pack as the other tries to tame his wild curls, "paint my face for me?"  
  
Brynjar's smile is bright as he sits cross-legged across from Hákon and starts to paint lines and swirls, his fingers gentle, especially so when they pass over the fragile skin of Hákon's eyelids, fluttering and wanting to watching Brynjar's face with the little wrinkle between his brows that he gets whenever he's concentrating. Once Brynjar is done he guides Hákon's hands so that the lines are steadier and explains what they mean as he goes. After that they wash the paint off only before bed, taking time each morning to paint one another and in years to come there will be little hidden meanings only they will know of that the world will never understand.


End file.
